Abstract: Government-led technological innovation system in China is facing serious challenges. Farmers cooperatives play a significant role in promoting agricultural technological innovation. As a typical labor managed firms, cooperatives differ greatly from traditional investor-owned firms (IOF) in terms of enterprise objectives, employment patterns, democratic decision-making mechanism and profit distribution. The special governance structure of farmers cooperatives and the special characteristics of public products of agricultural technological innovation, determine the unique endowment of technological innovation in farmers cooperatives. Based on eight typical cases, this study constructs the typology of technological innovation model in farmers cooperatives from two dimensions of technology acquisition mode and technology spillovers. We mapped out four types of technological innovation model in farmers cooperatives, including grassroot social innovation (GSI), grassroot commercial innovation (GCI), introduced social innovation (ISI) and introduced commercial innovation (ICI). We adopt the paradigm of “innovation mode – innovation performance – policy implication” to answer three questions. (1) What are the characteristics of technological innovation in farmers cooperatives and the differences from traditional IOF? (2) Farmers cooperatives have the genes of sustainable development. Besides economic performance, does technological innovation in cooperatives has social performance? How to Evaluate the technological innovation performance in cooperatives. (3) Since agricultural technological innovation has the characteristics of public goods, public policies should give appropriate incentives. From the perspective of policy subdivision and applicability, how should we formulate corresponding policy advocacy according to the technological innovation model in cooperatives to improve the pertinence and efficiency of policy implementation?By coding eight cases, we find that two concepts of technology acquisition mode and technology innovation spillover are very adaptive to construct typology of technological innovation in cooperatives. This has more theoretical and practical significance for understanding the characteristics of technological innovation, innovation performance and policy advocacy for farmers cooperatives.This study divides the technology acquisition mode of cooperatives into internal acquisition and external acquisition. The mode selection of technology acquisition in cooperatives are affected by three factors, namely entrepreneur capital, technological characteristics and government support. Compared with IOF, the mode selection of technology acquisition in cooperatives has unique characteristics. The factors affecting the technology spillover rate in cooperatives mainly include patent protection, technology embodiment, technology innovation cost and knowledgetacitness. Compared with IOF, technological innovation in farmers cooperatives has greater spillover rate. Technological innovation with high spillover rate has the nature of social innovation, while innovation with low spillover rate has the nature of traditional commercial innovation. Therefore, from the perspective of technology spillover, the technological innovation in cooperatives can be divided into social innovation and commercial innovation.A typology of four technological innovation modes can assist to offer policy recommendations. (1) GSI having a greater spillover effect, can improve social welfare. Meanwhile, its economic performance is relatively low since GSI with greater spillover needs to invest human capital and innovation funds. Therefore, the policy advocacy should focus on providing a financial compensation to cooperatives' innovative behavior，and encourage grassroot innovators in both spiritual and material terms. (2) In the model of GCI, grassroots in cooperatives independently develop relevant technologies. These technologies have a small spillover rate by commercializing innovation technologies. Cooperatives can monopolize the benefits of technological innovation and get higher economic performance. GCI can also improve the income of surrounding farmers by driving to use the innovative achievements. Therefore, GCI has a certain (medium) social performance. However, the technical level in grassroots innovation is relatively low. Therefore, the government should encourage cooperatives to carry out cooperative innovation with other scientific research institutions, and further enhance the technological level of existing technologies. (3) In the ICI model, farmers’ cooperatives introduce external technologies and reduce the spillover effect through commercializing the technologies to obtain innovative benefits. Through ICI has higher economic benefits, cooperatives can also get certain social performance by promoting the surrounding farmers to use these innovation technologies. In this model, innovation technologies mainly come from profitable and non-profitable research institutes. For non-profitable research institutes, the government should improve the conversion rate of technology achievements and the coverage of technology promotion. For profitable research institutes, if the technologies have high social performance, the government should provide the corresponding funds to support cooperatives to introduce these technologies. (4) In the ISI model, cooperatives introduce technologies from scientific research institutes, and improve the conversion rate of technology achievements through experimental demonstration. Therefore, ISI has higher social performance. However, the economic performance is at a medium level because cooperatives cannot monopolize the innovation benefits. Therefore, the government should pay attention to the transformation of technological achievements and encourage scientific research institutes to promote technology through cooperatives.This study contains the following theoretical and practical values. (1) A typology of four technological innovation modes is constructed from two dimensions of technology spillover and technology acquisition modes. It not only reveals the black box of technological innovation in farmers’ cooperatives, but also makes a beneficial supplement to the technological innovation in traditional IOF. (2) This study breaks through the limitations of previous studies on organizational technological innovation performance only from the economic perspective. On account of the sustainable development gene in cooperatives, it introduces the triple bottom line performance evaluation principle to study the economic performance and social performance of technological innovation in cooperatives. (3) there are great differences between farmers' cooperatives and investors-owned firms in technological innovation mode and innovation performance. Firstly, from the perspective of technology acquisition mode, the technological innovation in cooperatives is generally initiated bygrassroot people, such as technological talents in cooperatives. Internal acquisition mode is a source of typical grassroot innovation. While the technological innovation in IOF is accomplished by the innovation team. Secondly, from the perspective of technology spillover, technologies in most cooperatives have high spillover effect and the nature of social innovation. However, IOF will reduce spillover effect to maximize the profits of firms. Most of the technological innovations in IOF belong to the category of commercial innovation. Thirdly, farmers’ cooperatives have the genes of sustainable development. In the process of implementing technological innovation, cooperatives not only pursue economic performance, but also have higher social and environmental performance. While OIF usually aims at pursuing economic performance.

Key words: farmers co-operatives, technological innovation mode, technology spillovers, technology acquisition mode, innovation performance